2014-06-04
in
3 min read
There is nothing like a day full of activity to get the appetite up. I knew from the start of the day that I needed to think ahead for the food choices I’d be faced. Usually when I’m in this sort of work mode I reach for the easy foods that most people would. A sandwich for lunch is always a good option. Certainly one would snack on chips or pretzels or both. I had none of these options, so making sure I didn’t set myself up for failure was important.
Being away from home but with a kitchen I opted for a somewhat traditional Paleo breakfast of eggs and bacon. Three strips of bacon and two eggs fried in butter with very light seasoning. It was actually not all that filling compared to my shakes, so I also put down a handful of cocoa dusted almonds. That actually did the trick until lunch time. For some reason I was really craving ham for lunch. I think this comes from me usually eating a ham sandwich under circumstances such as these. Obviously that was out, so instead I opted for a nice thick ham steak. Along with that I sauteed a huge bunch of locally grown asparagus.
When I was buying those items I was thinking forward to what I would snack on. I knew I would need both a mid-afternoon meal and something to nibble on. I got a bunch of carrots to take care of the first problem. I also got some snap peas to help with that or to be used in my salad concoction. For the mid-afternoon snack I was picturing a big bowl of tomatoes, avocado and snap peas with salt, pepper and lemon juice drizzled on top. I ate it a little bit late, so it sort of interfered with dinner, but it was really tasty.
Dinner was going to be tricky. I don’t know many of the restaurants around here, even though I’ve been here countless times throughout my life. All the places seemed to sound like a sandwich shop, or bar food, or Italian food. We actually ended up going to an Italian restaurant, which wasn’t too bad in terms of flavor but decor left a bunch to be desired. Everything came with either pasta, or breading or cheese (or all of the above). Rather than opting for a salad I was able to make some small modifications to their salmon entree, which I then augmented with some steamed clams. What ended up coming out was an enormous portion of salmon, I’d say about 10 ounces, with a bunch of mushrooms and spinach. That combined with the dozen clams filled me up. Still, walking by the ice cream stores I was really tempted to just break down and eat it. I absolutely love ice cream. I didn’t however, and instead just opted to have some carrots when I got home.
I did break down on the caffeine withdraw today however. I ended up getting some Bai drinks and some unsweetened straight brewed tea. The total caffeine of what I drank was the equivalent of two cans of soda. It was enough to dull an ever building migraine. Rather than simply power through it, like I originally suggested, I think I’m going to approach it the same way I did back last summer. If I’m not feeling any symptoms then I will refrain from having any caffeine. If I do feel some I will have just enough to dull them and no more. I suspect that like last year within a week or two this will be a non-issue.